


The Unsuspecting Victim

by C_Inferno



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/F, boi howdy do i love to suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 10:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11461698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_Inferno/pseuds/C_Inferno
Summary: Mari missed two years of her friendship with Kanan and Dia and now that she's returned, she's realizing that there's somethings you can never get back.





	The Unsuspecting Victim

It's a flicker in her eyes. A twitch in her smile. A sharper eye might have noticed, but then again, she's Mari. She keeps the un-shiny feelings quieter than Dia and effortlessly. It persists as a low burn—simmering the longer she looks at the two of them. Kanan is the only person who could conceivably take Dia away. Even so, she keeps quiet. What wears her down are the real and subtle things: the smiles, the laughter, Kanan’s hand on Dia’s shoulder. Above all else, she considers, it’s the stories they tell each other when they're together. Mari missed two years of them, after all.

Two years of stories where she doesn't fit. Where it was only Kanan and Dia. "Remember when...oh, you weren't there, sorry." It's a knife in her stomach. The glances they share are ones she was never there for and it reminds her of sitting alone in a helicopter, watching Kanan and Dia shrink into the ground as she departed. She’s used to the weight in her chest, probably because it never really left.

Mari had worked hard to be where she was with Dia, bridging the gaps left by her absence and charming the vipers out of Dia’s eyes. But the relationship Dia had with Kanan was something Mari could never compare to. Kanan was the single person on this earth that could make Mari, with all her wealth and power, feel like she wasn’t good enough.

This, of course, she can never say. Hell, if she were to feel it hard enough someone was bound to notice. Mari buried the feelings as deeply as she could where they stuck into her flesh like shards of glass. Here they harmed no one. She would never have to explain to Kanan how much it burned to watch her exist so easily—so naturally—beside Dia. But rather than clench her fists or banish Kanan back to the sea, Mari paraded her smiles.

“ _My, my_. Should I be worried about a clandestine affair between my Dia and Kanan?” The words flow like venom yet trickle honeysweet. Harmless. She incites laughter as the two glance at one another through hidden smiles.

For a moment, the lightning in Mari’s eyes is more than she can tame and Dia notices. Her smile falters and she fidgets slightly as if being so close to Kanan is now somehow making her uncomfortable. It was a foolish arrangement to begin with, having Mari sit across from them. To say something about it would’ve been petty and, again, very un-shiny. Even though Kanan was her best friend, Mari felt fierce. It didn’t matter that Kanan would never try to take Dia away from her.

What mattered was that she could.

Mari had stopped paying attention to the worried creases in Dia’s forehead, the shy tilt of her eyebrows.

“Do you want something else to drink?” she asks in a small voice. Mari ignores the olive branch, but she gives Dia enough attention to see that she looks guilty. Now Mari hates herself for letting her feelings out. Time for damage control.

“Actually…” Mari forces a smile, but it’s sandy and painful. “That sounds like a great idea, Dia. What would you like? I’ll get you something too!” The high in her voice is contrived and it doesn’t fool Dia, Mari can tell, but Dia goes along with it for the sake of keeping the breezy façade of their evening meal alive. “You know what, how about peach and green tea?”

“That sounds fine,” Dia replies. Mari turns expectantly to Kanan, but she doesn’t want anything. She heads to the counter without looking back.

She wishes vehemently that she could just throw up this pit in her stomach. It’s only when the three of them are together that she hates herself. Mari tries to focus on all the times Dia has told her she loves her, but she loses herself in the days when she was an ocean apart from them. When all Dia had was Kanan, and they could only comfort each other while Mari languished a world away, wondering when she would ever see them again.

It wasn’t even just those two years that Mari studied abroad. It was an entire childhood. All the money in the world couldn’t buy history, much less the time Kanan and Dia shared before Mari ever came to this city. She glances over at them as she stands in line for drinks. Kanan is laughing, telling some joke probably, and Dia smiles for her. There are no vipers to charm—there never have been. Mari wishes she could look away, but she so wishes to have all the pieces of their friendship. It’s a desire that will never be fulfilled. They clearly didn’t need her.

Nobody needed her.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points to whoever guesses the song the title references.


End file.
